Obama Using the ‘Arts of Cyberwar’ Against Iran’s Nuclear Facilities

The front page of the New York Times today features a gripping excerpt from the book Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power, describing in detail the U.S. cyberwar against Iran. Through an effort code-named Olympic Games, created under George W. Bush with the help of Israel, the nuclear program in Iran has been set back up to two years, according to some anonymous government experts, though others question its effectiveness. Under Obama, the program has only been accelerated, leaving the president “acutely aware that with every attack he was pushing the United States into new territory, much as his predecessors had with the first use of atomic weapons in the 1940s, of intercontinental missiles in the 1950s and of drones in the past decade.” The future isnow.

According to the report, Bush was adamant that his computer worm project, meant to cause Iranian centrifuges to self-destruct, continue after he left office: “Meeting with Mr. Obama in the White House days before his inauguration, Mr. Bush urged him to preserve two classified programs, Olympic Games and the drone program in Pakistan. Mr. Obama took Mr. Bush’sadvice.”

The complex computer code, the previously reported Stuxnet, worked much in the way it would in a spy movie, put into place by undercover agents and ignorant enemy employees. “It turns out there is always an idiot around who doesn’t think much about the thumb drive in their hand,” said one person behind the plan. “The intent was that the failures should make them feel they were stupid, which is what happened,” another explained. When things started going inexplicably wrong, Iran “overreacted” and even fired people. The worm is credited with “achieving, with computer code, what until then could be accomplished only by bombing a country or sending in agents to plantexplosives.”

But this isn’t just some computer game. Although the U.S. government has not publicly acknowledged using cyberattacks, they’re well aware of the dangers in this newfrontier:

Mr. Obama has repeatedly told his aides that there are risks to using — and particularly to overusing — the weapon. In fact, no country’s infrastructure is more dependent on computer systems, and thus more vulnerable to attack, than that of the United States. It is only a matter of time, most experts believe, before it becomes the target of the same kind of weapon that the Americans have used, secretly, againstIran.

#BREAKING: I’m told the entire @BPDAlerts Emergency Response Team has resigned from the team, a total of 57 officers, as a show of support for the officers who are suspended without pay after shoving Martin Gugino, 75. They are still employed, but no longer on ERT. @news4buffalo

In case you were wondering about the unmarked federal agents dotting Washington

Few sights from the nation’s protests in recent days have seemed more dystopian than the appearance of rows of heavily armed riot police around Washington, D.C., in drab military-style uniforms with no insignia, identifying emblems or names badges. Many of the apparently federal agents have refused to identify which agency they work for. “Tell us who you are, identify yourselves!” protesters demanded, as they stared down the helmeted, sunglass-wearing mostly white men outside the White House. Eagle-eyed protesters have identified some of them as belonging to Bureau of Prisons’ riot police units from Texas, but others remain a mystery.

The images of such heavily armed, military-style men in America’s capital are disconcerting, in part, because absent identifying signs of actual authority the rows of federal officers appear all-but indistinguishable from the open-carrying, white militia members cos-playing as survivalists who have gathered in other recent protests against pandemic stay-at-home orders. Some protesters have compared the anonymous armed officers to Russia’s “Little Green Men,” the soldiers-dressed-up-as-civilians who invaded and occupied western Ukraine. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to President Donald Trump Thursday demanding that federal officers identify themselves and their agency.

To understand the police forces ringing Trump and the White House it helps to understand the dense and not-entirely-sensical thicket of agencies that make up the nation’s civilian federal law enforcement. With little public attention, notice and amid historically lax oversight, those ranks have surged since 9/11—growing by roughly 2,500 officers annually every year since 2000. To put it another way: Every year since the 2001 terrorist attacks, the federal government has added to its policing ranks a force larger than the entire Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).